#we control their lives and money

[freewatermelon0]

They don't care about you, all you should know is that you control their money and their lives too so don't stop even if you were the last person doing it.

[maeamian]

Becoming deeply radicalized against the idea of crewed Mars missions, y'know how the Rovers keep sending back better and better data what if instead of that we made an even bigger one and devoted nearly 90% of its capacity to holding a guy in a bubble on top of it instead of sending back useful data, but wait! They'll eliminate like a half hour of latency and also almost certainly contaminate the landing site and possibly the entire planet, so it's not all downside.

[athophobic]

there’s something i feel i can remember..! i don’t want to forget what’s going on. i don’t want to be trapped like this. and i tried again, and stanley pushed a button. is it over? i’m going back. this is more important than you can ever know. this isn’t a challenge, it’s a tragedy. what else is there? what came before this?i can’t lose myself in the stretch of emptiness between you and me. the end will be here soon. very soon. i can wait. i wish you to feel afraid as i do. i’ll give it all up, i’ll burn my story to the ground! it was the only thing in the world that was mine and you’ve run it into the ground. the end is never the end. i can’t quite recall, but i believe my story took place in an office building… is that correct? do you remember? it’s all determined? why don’t i get to decide? why don’t i get a say in all this? the end is never the end. the story needs this. it’s all out of my control now. just your decision as to exactly when you’re going to make me suffer, to leave me all alone. the end is never the end. i know you too well. i need this. and stanley was happy. i will be laughing at every second of your inevitable life from the moment we fade in, to the moment i say “happily ever after”. and stanley was happy. i wanted us to be happy here. and stanley was happy. the story needs you. it cannot exist without you. and stanley was happy. take as much time as you need. and stanley was happy. this is a very sad story about the death of a man named stanley. and stanley was happy. i did enjoy telling his story. so very much. this is the story of a man named stanley. i hope you like it. i hope you understand it. i hope you set stanley free.

[rainbow-neko-artblog]

Are we gonna see you on Tumblr more often, since the ban for TikTok might be going out?

mmmmmmmm

I really hate thinking about it but i suppose yes.

I think ill have to focus on posting to youtube i guess....since i can still make monetizable money over there....and ill probably have to push my patreon more-

Hey maybe ill be able to make designs for my redbubble and- work on Tiny Tails more hah....ah....

yeah.....work.......that'll distract me from such a volatile ban of freedom of speech......

...

[ananke-xiii]

I've written somewhere that Team Free Will is actually Team Dean's Will but it wasn't, like, a criticism or something like that, it was what I personally got once the show was over (and I still have very legit concerns about Dean's choice during the last episode).

I don't think Chuck won in the end because he, as a character, wouldn't have wanted for Dean to die. As far as polysemy goes, Chuck does represent many things but, to be really honest, I don't really think he represents John Winchester on a cosmic level. Like, yeah, OF COURSE, we can definitely put them together in the "Shitty Fathers" box but when Chuck tells Dean that he's not like his father I think he's not that wrong after all. Chuck is much worse and not because he's a John Winchester on a gigantic scale, it's not about quantity. He's worse because he just is.

Leaving aside the many problematic aspects of their relationship, Mary and John can be totally seen as Amara and Chuck (the show does go there and I think it's interesting for many reasons) but it's also true that the one who lied in the couple was Mary, not John. Even if we know why she had to lie and it can be understandable, it's also true that both Sam and Mary are willing to omit a Very Important Thing about themselves that, eventually, gets their partners killed. But, unlike Chuck who's to blame for his omissions, lies and manipulations, both Sam and Mary are two characters that, even more than Amara, are ALWAYS stripped of any choice. So it's almost like no matter what they do, they can only fight for their free will but never fully live it (SPN final thesis: you can never get what you want).

So yeah, if we consider John as a person and, more specifically, as a partner (therefore not in his paternal role), Chuck's not like him at all. Chuck's in control of his narrative, John couldn't even choose his own car at the dealership (btw, in my fantasy John has a love/hate relationship with the whole album "Boys for Pele" by Tori Amos that he keeps hidden like Bobby's passion for Tori Spelling). John is very much mainly narrated by other characters, in this respect he's just like Mary, to be honest. We don't 100% know who he is because he's a character described by absence. So much so that Sam and Dean didn't even know he had a fucking SECRET family!!!

Chuck is portrayed to be less enigmatic. We know he lies because we are shown that multiple times even before "Moriah". He's a character without much depth and that bothers him So. Much. He's a God who wants to be like Keith Richards. LOL!

However, even if Chuck, to me, objectively doesn't win (I also have my own "Billie won theory"), he neverthless does represent the Dictorial Power of Shitty Fathers that some might call The Patriarchy (not me. I would NEVER!). In this way, yes, he sort of wins because, as I've said, the natural order wins in the end and, in SPN, the natural order is Absent, Shitty Fathers. The sugarcoated version of the bygone days, the bittersweet nostalgia for a golden past that inevitably leads to death.

And who, the show tells us, represents all of the above? The absence of John Winchester via the presence of his journal. A man who's become so powerful he's been morphed into a myth. Maybe he is the real tulpa of this story, after all.

What does this have to do with Team Dean's Will? I find that saying that what Dean did in the end is a "choice" is very troublesome. To me personally. But the show does imply that, not strongly enough because it leaves some room for doubt but it ultimately does that. So okay, I'll bite and will consider it to be a Real Choice out of Dean's Free Will. Fine. What about Sam, though?

S15 starts with Sam and Rowena and ends with Sam and Dean. Rowena and Dean both commit suicide that's not 100% framed as suicide. Among other things, it is framed as a sacrifice. And Sam's there with them and he doesn't want that. He says so. He tells Rowena to "screw the books" and he tells Dean that he doesn't want what Dean is asking for.

Rowena's act is framed as being done out of her own agency because she believes in prophecy and magic. To which I say bullshit, not to Rowena but to the show because this is a cop-out. Since S13 Rowena couldn't do what she wanted to do because it wasn't possible. Fine. But how come that prophecy seems to be working only for her? How come the "rules are rules" mindset only applies to her? Why do other characters' books change and hers alone doesn't? How come her sacrifice is both destined and out of her own free will? It means that it can happen then! That destiny and free will can coincide! This change in thinking about the question is so packed with possibilities that they could've done another 15 seasons about it. Unfortunately, destiny and free will seem to meet in Definite Death which meh. Story over.

And Sam? He's still there. Participating and not participating. Against his will.

With Dean things are a bit different because we do know that Chuck is obsessed with him. Once Chuck is out of the picture, we could imply, Dean's finally "free" to choose what he wants. Which is such a naive thought because if it were only the absence and/or presence of things/persons to determine our lives we, perhaps, wouldn't need therapy.

But, as I've said, I'll be good and keep my promise: let's say Dean chooses out of his own free will. It should be cool for us, right? This is what Dean wants. The Big Big Bad is not dead but he's not the man behind the curtains anymore so hurrah! Free/Dean's Will wins. We should feel like we must respect that. And yet, it doesn't feel right.

And Sam? He's still there. Participating and not participating. Against his will.

It doesn't feel very "Free Willy" if the people just let the orca free. It's not very Free Will for Sam if the show tells us that it's Dean literally getting out of the picture that will "free" Sam. Brrrrrrr.

So what does this tell me? That the "destiny vs free will" discourse seems to be working only when there's a villain on the horizon, a commanding power that wants to tell you what to do, someone actually stronger than you whose actions can alter your life's story.

If you take that power out, what's left? Only people with their choices. And your absent, dead father's journal radiating The Real Power (the idea of power inside your mind that controls you). Is free will still in the room with us? Cause it starts to look like somebody's supposedly "free" will might be somebody's else constraint. As far as Sam is concerned, it seems to say: it doesn't matter whether there's a God, Death or that prophecy is real or not. What matters is that you can only stand there, participating and not participating. You don't want that? Too bad, 'cause that's what you got.

Maybe the finale really took the worst from my "Billie won theory" and the worst from the "Chuck won theory", i.e. an idea of natural order that upholds patriarchy. Or, since I can and will go there, that the natural order is the patriarchy.

So what about Free Will, is it an illusion? If it applies to only a few it certainly doesn't seem like something worth fighting for. And the natural order is indeed restored in the end. I don't think the show gives a real answer to that, by the end of S15 there are so many things that simultaneously mean 100 other things that everybody can take what they want from the show.

If you ask me, I think it was a moot question, to be honest. It made sense in S4-5 but once SPN goes full meta in S15 it becomes very superficial. Of course I know they're fictional characters and literally don't have free will, the premises were interesting because I wanted to see how these characters would react to stuff happening in the story. Once the story is revelead to be a bluff, though, what am I left with? Characters spiralling into crisis after crisis. This could be interesting in a novel but in a 15-seasons-long series you have to give me something ELSE as well, the "all die more or less happily" last-minute finale (knowing Heaven is a scam, by the way) is just... not having to deal with the consequences of the narrative choices that were made.

Or, perhaps, Supernatural is a show where one of its themes is "destiny vs free will" that ultimately tells you that there's no destiny but there's also no free will, there's only John's journal aka the Power of the Dominant Narrative. Which is the power of the people who write that narrative for us to believe in it. Perhaps, not even the people making the show were free to do what they would've liked to do. They were also there, like Sam, participating and not participating. Finding ways to cope.

[icewindandboringhorror]

sometimes looking at like Self Help Strategies lists for the symptoms I'm having is always just like:

thing that I already do

thing I have tried 10 times

thing I already do

thing that I don't have the money to do

thing I already do

thing I've been doing since I was 10yrs old to no avail

thing that is impossible given my situation

thing that doesn't apply to me

thing that I already do

thing I have already tried

hrmm, oh wait, maybe finally- OH, yeah.. okay. thing that I already do but it was just phrased slightly differently

thing I have already done

[hauntingblue]

Oh now the villagers know..... and arlong burned the town to punish her..... for some reason

[girlthativealwaysbeen]

i think growing up is just life repeatedly sucker punching you and saying bitch you thought things were gonna better lmao no you're so naive and stupid for having hope in 20 years the world will be flaming bag of garbage and no matter how hard you work you'll get eliminated at some point

[itspileofgoodthings]

you know what I’ve realized lately? that’s really helped? the axiom: it just doesn’t really make that much of a difference. Or at least it doesn’t when you’re talking about good things and not, like, doing good vs. doing evil. Big choices, little choices, decisions, decisions —it’s not just that they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things—because they do! —but just. It won’t make that big of a difference. Life will continue to be wonderful AND difficult, fascinating AND hopelessly mundane, full of roses AND thorns and all the other cliches whether you walk down one road or another. And you’ll get used to the joys and sick of the sorrows whatever they are, and you’ll be ungrateful and bored and dissatisfied in some measure some of the time and you’ll have to work on all the things you have to work on anyways and just. Yeah! It doesn’t make that big of a difference! Even the biggest things!

[menlove]

like I'm Going to start biting. born to be a type b personality forced to be a type a by having the most immature parents on planet earth 😐

[snekdood]

i feel weird even claiming my family used to be considered "rich" bc a lot of yall immediately jump to having summer homes, 20 yachts, and enough money to save a country

[r0semultiverse]

These organizations supporting KOSA going through while claiming they want to help marginalized kids are actually so disgusting to me. The posts they make about Nex is just virtue signaling & words when their actions say let’s make things worse for these children.

I’m gonna be 100% honest, they should keep that kid’s name out of their damn mouths so long as they support KOSA. Like actually fuck you & eat shit. Actions speak louder than words, traitorous scumbags. You don’t care, you care about your stakeholders more.

Your organization can only thrive & exist so long as there’s a problem to donate towards solving. Of course you would support KOSA, you need a problem to keep existing in order to look like the good guys & solve it. Just go mask off & call us slurs & your “customers” at this point, it would be less disgusting than covering it up behind kind words.

[hershelwidget]

nono guys im not done inkling posting for tonight

now i am

[coochiequeens]

Since I touched on this with the articles about Jojo Siwa already planning on having 1 girl and 2 boys and the twibling article with the gay men who just happened to have had two boys through surrogacy ........

Rise in parents engaging in sex-selection during IVF has the fertility biz booming

By Cassy Fiano-Chesser | May 14, 2024 

The fertility industry has opened new doors for countless would-be parents across the globe, and it’s not just doors allowing them to have children. Thanks to in-vitro fertilization (IVF), people can create their children and then have them tested to ensure they meet all the right specifications. While this brave new world sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, it’s all too real – and using IVF to select the kind of child you want is becoming more and more common.

In 2021, socialite and reality television alum Paris Hilton announced her plans to use IVF to create her family, and choosing the sex of her babies was one of the reasons. “Well, we have been doing the IVF. So I can pick twins if I like. Kim [Kardashian] is actually the one who told me about that, I didn’t even know anything about it. And I’m happy she told me that advice, and introduced me to her doctor, so yeah. We have them all ready to go,” she said, continuing, “I think it’s just something most women should do, just to have. And then you can pick if you want boys or girls — just because I really want to have twins that are a boy and a girl. The only way to 100% get that is by making it happen that way.”

Hilton is hardly alone. The number of people foregoing sex in favor of IVF in order to have children is growing — as is sex selection. Though, according to the Daily Mail, sex selection is illegal in most of the globe, it isn’t in the United States, and it’s become trendy.

“The market is the size of the human race,” Jeffrey Steinberg, founder of the Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles, said in an interview with Slate. He claimed 85% of his clients are drawn in by the idea of choosing their baby’s sex.

Sex selection has long been practiced, albeit not using IVF; instead, parents sometimes found out the sex of their baby during an ultrasound, and if it was the “wrong” sex, they sought an abortion. Though this has typically been a way to bolster a cultural preference for boys, Slate pointed out that in the United States, it’s become the opposite: the market is skewed toward girls.

Sharon Moayeri, the founder of OC Fertility in Newport Beach, California, does not market the ability to choose the baby’s sex as aggressively as Steinberg does, and therefore, said only around 15% of her clients arrive without fertility issues. Another doctor at the medical center at the University of California San Francisco told Slate that “single mothers by choice, same-sex couples, and families with a history of autism” were typically more likely to request girls. A study also found that white parents having their first child chose female embryos 70% of the time.

"When I think about having a child that’s a boy, it’s almost a repulsion, like, Oh my God, no,” one woman said.

Another argued, “Boy children tend to be less caring towards their parents. It doesn’t really matter if it’s socialized or biological. It’s probably socialized, but I can’t change all of society.”

And because laws in other countries ban sex selection, thousands of people fly to the United States each year just to take advantage of this country’s lax fertility regulations. And it means big business for the fertility industry.

“It’s a moneymaking industry,” Laura Kerwin, a Harvard-trained psychologist, told Slate. “People need to realize that [clinics] have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to make money. They’re trying to sell you on an option.”

There is little to no oversight within the fertility industry, meaning there is little to no information on what the current state of the industry is. “We do not even know how many frozen embryos we have in this country,” Margaret Marsh, a professor at Rutgers University, told the Atlantic, explaining that the last count — 400,000 — was 20 years ago. “[Today] we have no idea.”

The Atlantic also noted that 75% of fertility clinics advertise sex-selection as an offered service, allowing people to undergo IVF simply because they want to choose if they have a boy or a girl. Steinberg told the Atlantic this “service” makes the fertility industry approximately $90 million each year.

Steinberg also scoffed at the notion of increased regulations, saying it is “putting the handcuffs on scientists.” Then, using pro-abortion terminology, he added, “If there’s anything society should have learned, it’s ‘Keep their hands off of people’s reproductive choices’.”

IVF, though often described as a way to help heartbroken infertile couples to create families, has created a monster in which children are no longer treated as human beings, but as products to be designed, engineered, and then sold to the highest bidder upon demand. And as these embryonic children are products, they can be screened, destroyed, traded, and even turned into jewelry.

Any attempts to cut back on this commodification is swiftly attacked as cruelty towards the infertile — but what about the children being created? What will it take for the line to be drawn and a stop be placed on this reproductive free-for-all?

I checked on that statement about embryos turned into jewelry and found articles mostly dating back to 2018. But it did happen.

https://www.genethique.org/jewellery-made-from-supernumerary-embryos-obtained-after-ivf/?lang=en

"When I think about having a child that’s a boy, it’s almost a repulsion, like, Oh my God, no,” one woman said. While I get that I'm still creeped out about this being a big international business.

[tortoisesshells]

burke for character bingo please <3

Burke Devlin

Character Opinions Bingo

[cainite-bite]

Im sorry but this trend of "stay at home girlfriend" that's being glorified is the saddest fucking thing.

First of all never let anyone control your finances and solely rely on another for that because if they leave you're stuck with nothing. If they die you are stuck with nothing. If they are abusive and you need to get outta dodge you got nothing. Never let anyone have that power over you whether man or woman or literally anyone else.

2ndly it's also sad to say you cook, you clean, you wash the literal smudged underwear of some schmup, you're doing the full time work in their place and all for nothing but to get to call yourself "girlfriend". You don't get paid, you don't have the same tax benefits that you might have from marriage, you can't hop onto their insurance, you don't get anything because you're stuck with a person who doesn't view you as anything more than a live-in bangmaid with little value outside of that because they know you got so little self worth that you allow yourself to get used as a doormat.